See ya All Hallow's Eve...onto turkey time.

How fast can I get the turkey stuff up once I take the spooky stuff down?  Because these pillows have to make their appearance.  I must say these are one of my favorite items I've ever sewn. I really enjoy the play on texture, the burlap, buttons, embroidery as well as the quilting.

Here's how it came together:  I made a quick sketch...and thought....yeah, that's about right.  From my initial sketch, I broke it up into pieces for iron on transfer, because it's quick and painless.  So, I had my buttons and pleather and burlap....let's figure out how to put them all together into a cohesive piece.

1. Cut burlap into rough shape of hay bale.  Stitch on roughly.

2.  Cut all your shapes using fusible web.  With the pleather, I found that I could use the iron on transfer at the beginning, so on the back of the fabric.  But, hear me now.  Do not try and iron the pleather onto your fabric...you risk messing the heck out of your iron.  And it won't stick.  I may have tried.  But, the reason I tell you to do it on the back of your pleather, is so you can cut out the shape perfect!  But, you can really just wing it if you want to.

3.  See, just pin it down in the proper place, and then you can remove a pin if needed to iron the feathers in place as they're tucked behind the body.

4.  Arrange your tail feathers as you like.  Do this on your ironing board so you don't have to juggle this from your work table, as I did, and then have to rearrange them because they slipped and moved.

5.  Iron everything down...making sure to be cautious of the pleather then stitch around everything with your sewing machine.  Add in a beak and gobbler thingy.

6.  Aaaaahhhh!!!  Stitch on button eyes.  If you're like me, you will stab them with pins to know approximately where you would like them placed.  Disturbing, I know.

7.  Sew on a 1.25" teal border.  Around that stitch a large white border...to fit the size of your pillow of course.  I have 20 x 20 inch pillows...so my finished front was 22 x 22 inches.  I like my pillow cases to be a touch loose, not sausage casing tight.  Personal preference.

8.  I gave mine some wheat stalks on either side to balance out the button heavy top.  And did little cross stitch embroidered stalks.  Back stitched the turkey legs on with orange.

9.  Sew on buttons til your heart's content.  Here's the back, I wanted to show you that I individually sewed on each button.  I did this for a reason...I find that sometimes when you stretch thread from one spot to another, it tugs and pulls the fabric and then you have a crease or a divot...or other unpleasantries.  So, stitch on a button, tie it off and snip your thread.  Begin again.  It takes longer, but especially where pillows get squished regularly, you'll be happy you did when you don't pop a button off.

10.  The back.  I used my Pocket Pillow tutorial and it worked very well thank you very much.  Cute backside fabric, huh?

Make two.  Or as many as you want.  So cute.  I have to say that I am extremely pleased with how this turned out.  Sometimes you create a vision in your brain...and you work on it...and what was in your mind definitely is not what turns out in real life.  This case though...it worked.  I am in love. 

 It's because of this pillow that I love decorating for Thanksgiving.

Thanks for reading!! 

Heather

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